Sixteen years ago, before Al Gore or George W. Bush carried White House hopes,
before the dimpled chads and butterfly ballots bogged the presidential election process, candidates challenged the validity
of the computer punch-card system that's under heavy scrutiny today.

Computer and elections experts testified around the country that the punch-card
computer program could secretly be altered, disenfranchising one-third of the voters in the 1984 election.

Protesters cried theft. Losers begged for manual recounts. Lawsuits bounced court
to court. And, at the last minute, a state legislature stepped in to effectively quash any legal remedy.

The New York Times and The New Yorker magazine delved into the allegations with
front page pieces.

And the story, at least part of it, traveled right to where the latest tale began:
Palm Beach County.

David Anderson was 54 when he was stomped by a 60 percent to 40 percent margin
in his bid to unseat Palm Beach County Property Appraiser Rebecca Walker. Pre-election polls showed that his race should have
been close, nearly a 50-50 split.

Republicans alleged that there were 18 irregularities in the vote count, including
one precinct where 61 voters cast 150 ballots.

When the canvassing board denied their request for a manual recount, Anderson sued.

"Turning over my races was impossible," he said, "I just wanted to get rid of those
computers."

He charged that the election had been run on "machines that permit a means of changing
the result on the ballots contrary to the votes cast by the electors through an alter system in the commands in the computer
program."

One tip-off, Anderson said at the time, was the "60-40" vote split in races for
county constitutional offices. The four incumbents all captured between 59 and 63 percent of the vote. Anderson said such
a margin was too uniform to be credible. He called it the "60-40 syndrome."

He wanted to see the computer program. But lawyers from the manufacturer, Computer
Election Systems, obtained a court order blocking him: It "would breach the security of the system, and thereby cast doubt
upon the results of C.E.S. election programs" all over the United States. The circuit court eventually tossed his case.

The Florida Legislature piled on the very next day, introducing a bill to protect
government computer programs from public access. Anderson's fight here was over.

Meanwhile, candidates in Indiana, West Virginia and Maryland went further than
Anderson. They accused C.E.S. and the election supervisors of conspiring to fix elections. The program was such a mess of
computer code, they argued, that a person could plug into the counter a ballot-like IBM computer card that can reprogram the
machine and alter an election's outcome. And no one would know.

The courts wouldn't listen. Anderson joined a Washington, D.C., freelance reporter,
traveling around the country warning state attorneys general against using the punch-card computer system.

They also lobbied Congress to create uniform election standards that prohibited
elections offices from using the C.E.S. computer punch-card system. That would be impossible and too expensive, he was told,
because every county and state had its own election standards.

"Bush and Gore can count and recount all they want," he said, "but with those computer
programs, we'll never know the actual winner."